Whilst any British or US soldier responsible for the litany of appalling crimes committed in Iraq should be pursued relentlessly – which has broadly been less than the case to date – the ultimate responsibility for the whole tragic disaster for which both countries’ leaders and military brass will surely be haunted throughout history, lies with those at the political top. Their blatant mistruths led to the invasion and its bloody, inhuman, ignorant, culturally clueless, unending aftermath. Of the ICC decision, Reg Keys, who stood against Blair in the 2005 election and whose twenty year old son, Tom was killed in Iraq said: “It makes me very angry. They don’t call him Teflon Tony for nothing.”
However, Anthony Charles Linton Blair, QC, will still have to spend a lot of time looking over his shoulder. In what the Daily Mail describes as: “a dramatic attempt to impeach Tony Blair for misleading Parliament over the Iraq war”, a cross party group of MPs are building support: “for an attempted prosecution of the former Prime Minister”, after Wednesday’s publication of the Inquiry’s findings. (2)
The MPs are using an ancient parliamentary power, unused since 1806 to bring Blair to trial in Parliament. The groups charge is that:
“he should be impeached over allegations (that) he breached his constitutional duties as Premier.”
His pivotal claims regarding Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction – which, he had asserted, could reach the West “in 45 minutes” had been “contradicted by his own intelligence (agencies) assessments”, points out the Mail. A parliamentary source told the Mail: “Impeachment is on our minds, but we will need to digest the Report.